


All of Your Flaws and All of My Flaws

by anneapocalypse



Series: Flaws [2]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-21 02:25:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1534178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneapocalypse/pseuds/anneapocalypse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even after Freelancer, Carolina finds that doing the right thing isn't always clear cut.</p><p>Contains spoilers for Season 11.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All of Your Flaws and All of My Flaws

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the end of Season 11, while Wash is being held prisoner by Locus and the Feds.
> 
> Inspired by the song "Flaws" by Bastille, from which the title is taken.
> 
> Thanks to [Larissa](http://archiveofourown.org/users/larissa) for beta-reading and helping me make this make sense.

The cell could be a lot worse. It’s a momentary relief to see, followed by a fresh stab of remorse, that she would try to justify it to herself like that. Comfortable or not, the eight-by-eight block can't exactly call up good memories. A few months ago it might not have occurred to her to remember that Wash had been imprisoned before, but it's part of that whole thinking of other people's feelings thing she's working on.

She drags a metal chair up to the barrier. Wash can't see her yet, not until she turns on visual. He hasn't taken his helmet off. Never did like showing his face. York told her once it's because Wash's got no poker face. Everything shows on it, whether he wants it to or not. He’s sensitive about it, York said. Probably one of those things he shouldn't have told her, strictly speaking, but it slipped out anyway and he just figured she wouldn't say anything. That was like York.

Maybe Wash’s still sensitive about it. Maybe it’s just force of habit.

With a gloved hand Carolina taps the button for visual.

"Just so you know," she says, pre-empting the startled tilt of Wash's helmet, "this wasn't how I meant for us to meet up again."

 

There’s a tightness at the base of her skull. Epsilon’s retreated back there as he does. Can’t show himself here anyway, but he gets this way about Wash. Edgy. Thought he was just being an ass about it until she actually had him in her head. She doesn’t know what really went down with them—won’t ever know, Epsilon’s memories of back then are too jumbled and she sure can’t ask Wash, but it’s clear neither of them have any desire to be around the other.

She has to admit even to herself—and though she tries not to think about it too much, she knows that he knows, there’s no way he doesn’t know—Epsilon’s not easy to be around. Sure, he’s stable now, more or less, but there’s still such a harsh tangle of emotion in there, stuff that surfaces sometimes unbidden, provoked by nothing more than an idle thought on her part, a flash of pain or a flare of rage or a voice so much like her father it sends a real physical pain lancing behind her eyes and knotting in her gut.

_Jesus, I’m sorry Carolina, are you okay, I—_

It’s nothing, I’m fine. Just a headache.

He knows, there’s no way he doesn’t know. But he clings to her with the desperation of a stray dog, and she knows he has nowhere else to go.

 

“How did you get here?” There’s a hushed tone of concern in Wash’s voice, but there’s relief, too. Guilt twists in her chest. She _will_ get him out. Not today _—_ but she will. Make sure nothing happens to him, or the others. She has to be so careful. Shouldn’t even be here, but she had to see. Had to talk to him.

“I could ask you the same thing.” God, could she ever. “Thought you were going home.”

“So did we.” Wash sits forward on the steel bunk, hands on his gray kneeplates.

“You’re pretty far from home, Wash.” Her gloved fingers fidget on the console. She wants to understand.

“No kidding.”

She tells herself he isn’t being evasive, but god, it sure feels like it. Don’t start accusing. Easy, Carolina.

“There was no record of you and the sim _—_ and your friends on that shuttle, Wash.” Voice level. Steady.

_“What?”_

“I’m doing what I can. We can fix this.” If only she could take off her helmet. Look him in the eye. “I’m trying. I just need some answers.”

Wash cocks his head. “ _I’m_ trying to understand why you aren’t opening this cell.”

Carolina shakes her head in confusion. Wash, of all people, should understand _—_ “I’m taking a huge risk just being here—talking to you like this. The cell bars your personal channel, I couldn’t— Wash, we need to talk about the Insurrection.”

“The— _what?_ ”

“The rebels, Wash!” She can feel her voice rising. Careful. Don’t lose it, Carolina. “The people you appear to be helping, unless you want to explain to me what’s really going on.”

“What’s really—” Wash trails off, shaking his head with an air of disbelief. “You’re with the _Feds_?”

“You mean the _UNSC?_ ” She wants to understand. Really does. There has to be a reason.

 

There has to be a reason they were on that shuttle. Not just the _wrong_ shuttle (while the one for Valhalla somehow left without them, though the crew knew they were supposed to be on board), but _that_ one.

It should’ve been such a simple job, especially after the crash. Still don’t know what caused it, but the package was right there, unopened, easily secured. Hell, she shouldn’t have even had to touch down. Her contact would’ve sent the goods up the space elevator, and they’d be out of orbit by now. If Locus hadn’t started in about the prisoners.

_Nothing’s ever fucking simple, is it._

Calm down, Church. We’ll figure this out.

(Still so weird calling him Church, even though she hasn’t been called by her real name for years. It’s what he prefers, though. Keeps him calmer. That’s important.)

She would’ve recognized them anyway, just by the descriptions, but for some reason she can’t fathom Wash’s been throwing around his Freelancer name on this planet and so not only does Locus have him, he knows what he is. What he was. Seemed almost delighted, in his cold way—like he’d caught some prize. God, if he gets a good look at her armor—if he figures out she’s one of them, too—

They’re on the same side, but Locus is… unsettling. Something about him makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Or maybe that’s Epsilon getting twitchy in there. Even he doesn’t like Locus.

_Something fucked up about that guy. You sure we can trust him?_

He’s on our side, Church.

_Whatever. Let’s just get this done._

 

“You really don’t have any idea what you’ve walked into, do you?”

She shakes her head in disbelief. “And you do? _Insurrectionists_ , Wash?”

“Carolina—” She cuts him off, cursing, how can he be so _stupid_ as to use her name but he barrels right over her. “This isn’t _Freelancer_. These aren’t a group of fucking tech junkies colluding with fanatical aliens and you’re not the hero swooping in to stop them. They just want to govern their own planet!”

“Did you even bother to find out what—” Damn it, she can’t tell him, can’t trust him with this now, god damn it how did this all get so fucked up. “—what kind of _means_ they’re using to get what they want? Do you even know anything about those people?”

Wash’s visor inclines toward her in a glare. “You know, we didn’t really have time to chat before your people attacked—”

“They aren’t _my_ people—”

“Then what the hell are you _doing_?”

“What the hell are _you_ doing?!”

They glare at each other.

This wasn’t what she intended. Or expected. Should she have? Was she being foolish, to think Wash would still care about the UNSC? Does _loyalty_ or _treason_ still mean anything to him?

How badly has she misjudged the man, and what is that mistake going to cost her?

She levels out her voice and tries again. “Look, I get it, I mean I—what happened to us, that was the Director. It wasn’t the UNSC. If they’d known, they would’ve stopped it. You know they were already after the Director when we—”

Wash is off the cot and at the barrier, in her face, in an instant, and she starts back in spite of herself. Not just at the proximity but at the venom in his voice. He sounds nothing like the Wash she knew, then or now or ever. “You have no _idea_ what I know. You have no _idea_ what kind of shit I’ve gone through with the Director and the fucking government, who, by the way, are the same people who threw me in a cell a lot like this one. You’ve had your shit with the Director. I’ve had mine. With him, and with the UNSC too. Don’t you _dare_ tell me what I know.”

 

She can feel herself closing up, like her throat that one time when she was a kid, when she had some infection and had an allergic reaction to an antibiotic. Wheezing thin breaths through her constricting throat while they stuck her in the thigh with epinephrin and her father yelled at the doctors and her mother held her hand and told her to squeeze, told her it was all going to be fine. She'd be able to breathe again soon. Any second now. Just keep trying. It'll come. She'd sounded so sure, but then, she always did. So sure that a word would fix things, that if you didn't say a goodbye it wasn't real. So sure she could make you believe it.

Her dad believed it for almost two decades.

So did Carolina. Seemed like such a good idea they stole away the night before the shuttle left, just her and Epsilon. No need to drag it out, right. Wash and the others would be better off without them and god, the last thing she needed then was to make things emotional.

Tried to stay gone, Wash. Who’d have thought we’d both end up in the same hole-in-the-wall on the other side of the galaxy.

Just like that, whatever trust they managed to string back together in those last few days is gone. Snapped like a fucking cable line. Bad image. Even after all this time she can still feel the cold on her face, the sickening drop in her stomach as she swung, smacked facefirst into the ice wall. Her nose still isn’t quite the same.

It occurs to her to wonder why they keep living, her and Wash. Keep surviving all this fucked up shit, only to get wrapped up in more fucked up shit.

All she wanted was to do the right thing this time.

 

Epsilon—Church—is hissing in the back of her mind, a rush of indignance and bile that’s rare even for him. So forceful she’s dizzy for a moment, has to grip onto the chair to hold steady. Thick, black, nauseous rage, or maybe the churning in her stomach is her own, a feeling left over from her childhood, before boarding school, when things were bad at home and her dad, between bleak stretches of silence, would suddenly fly off the handle. The drawl got out of control when he was angry, every word becoming a wolf howl of fury that tore at her insides, made her go cold with fear. Drained away all that stubborn adolescent confidence that she was right, she was _right_ , and he just wasn’t listening, Dad _please_. Oh, he was listening now, and the force of his attention stormed over her, drowning away all reason and all confidence, and she knew she was wrong, she’d fucked up and she was wrong, okay, jesus just calm down, Dad.

Her vision’s gone white.

Church, Church stop, I need you to stop. _Church_. Stop it. Calm down.

The snow recedes to the edges, and Wash has backed off a few steps, eyeing her.

“I’m sorry.”

Beat.

“Sorry, Wash. I was out of line.”

Some of the tension drops out of Wash’s shoulders. Not all of it. “Yeah. You were.”

“I’m sorry.”

Silence.

“I forget how much you don’t know,” Wash says with a sort of dry resignation.

“Is that my fault?” It’s out before she can stop herself. She takes a deep breath. “If I could’ve been there when you—when it all happened, don’t you think I would’ve been?” Maine, god, Maine going over that cliff, however gone he was, he was still Maine, once, and she wasn’t there.

 _Can we not right now,_ Epsilon hisses.

Sorry.

Apologies. She’s working on those.

Wash sighs. “No. It’s not your fault you weren’t there. Is that what you want me to say? I thought you were dead, we all thought you were dead, we’ve been over this. And no, I don’t want to talk about it. All that’s behind me. Can we please get back to the present?”

“Yes.”

But she’s silent for a moment, stuck somewhere he isn’t.

“How, though?”

“How what?”

“How the hell do you put all that behind you. I thought…” She sits back in the chair, exhales heavily. “I thought leaving him behind in that bunker would, you know, leave him there.”

Wash nods. “It didn’t, did it.”

“Not really.”

“Might have something to do with that thing you carry around in your head.”

_The fuck is that supposed to mean, Washington?_

Can we not right now.

_Sorry, christ. You’re the one who wanted to talk to him._

"Also, I had... people.” Wash sits again. “Friends. They gave me a chance to be better."

"I'm glad," she says quietly. Nothing about her voice sounds glad. Oh well. She tried. “I’m trying.” She casts a glance down the cell block. Somewhere down there, Sarge and the rest. Maybe other prisoners. Insurrectionists. Rebels. Whatever the term is around here. She’s got a strange sensation like the floor’s become the ceiling, and vice versa. Not the first time. Probably won’t be the last.

That thought makes her feel very, very tired.

She stands.

“I won’t leave you here. You or your friends.” She hesitates, then adds, “I promise.” The words feel heavy, like she’s swallowed a rock and now she has to carry it around in her stomach. She wants to say something more, something like _It’s going to be all right_ , take a page out of Mom’s book, but that hasn’t worked out so well for her, in hindsight. She adds simply, “You can trust me.”

“Don’t have much of a choice, do I?” He’s trying to joke, Carolina thinks. It stings anyway.

“Oh, and…” Wash jerks his head toward the door. “That merc hanging around here. He with you guys?”

“Which, the one in the black and orange? Yeah, he’s with us.”

Wash’s visor tilts sharply. “Watch your back around him. I’ve seen him before.”

“Something you want to tell me?”

Wash gives a brief shake of his head. “Not right now.”

It’s like that, then. Okay. “Hang in there, Wash. I’ll be back.” She activates the unit, still working all right after the re-installation, and her armor assumes a nondescript trooper coloring as she slips out of the cell block.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based on a theory of mine that's twofold: a) Carolina is on Chorus because the rebels are in possession of stolen Freelancer tech (including the crate Locus recovered from the crashed ship), which she intends to retrieve, as per her conversation with Epsilon at the end of Season 10, and b) Felix didn't just retrieve the Reds and Blues from the crash site, he also arranged to get them on a shuttle headed for Chorus in the first place instead of what would have been their very short trip home.
> 
> As I'm writing this on the eve of Season 12, this theory will no doubt be proven wrong in short order, but hey, no harm in having a little fun with it anyway!


End file.
